


convince me.

by rhysgore



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 13:59:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6426616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysgore/pseuds/rhysgore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love you,” he murmurs, and kisses again, the shell of Joshua’s ear this time.</p>
<p>“You’re drunk,” Joshua replies</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Joshua Graham spends the majority of his life wondering how he feels about Edward Sallow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	convince me.

**Author's Note:**

> i like caesar/joshua unironically so im probably going to hell, but IN THE MEAN TIME, have some feelings™

He’s 22 when he first hears the words, dropped from a mouth loosened by alcohol and the thrill of victory. Watching Edward (he’ll always be Edward, no matter how much he conquers and how big his head gets) and the tribals celebrate, Joshua feels out of place. The drinking and the dancing, and the  _ fucking- _ it’s not something he was raised to even look at. He sits quietly away from the fire, reading from a text they salvaged somewhere farther east. Thinking.

His peace doesn’t last. A shadow falls over him, and Joshua doesn’t need to look up to see who it is that approached him, who kneels on the ground and slinks towards him, sliding a hand up his arm. There’s only one person who would be so bold with him.

Edward smells of sweat, alcohol, and dirt as he curls up next to the other man. Joshua doesn’t shrug him off. Doesn’t push him away, even as Edward presses lips to his temple.

“I love you,” he murmurs, and kisses again, the shell of Joshua’s ear this time.

“You’re drunk,” Joshua replies, evenly. He feels Edward laugh softly against his skin, lips moving down his jawline. One hand twining in the fabric of his shirtsleeve, the other moving steadily down his chest, splayed flat against his stomach.

“Doesn’t change anything. I’ll still love you when I’m sober.” His voice is slurred. Joshua finally turns his head to see the fire reflected in Edward’s glassy, unfocused eyes, and the genuine, guileless smile on his face. The sounds of celebration are white noise in the background.

Joshua feels a flicker of irritation rise in his chest. “You don’t love me. The alcohol is telling you that you feel something you don’t,” he says, shaking the wandering hands off. Edward’s face twists into something like anger, the potency of the expression dampened by intoxication. He rises to his feet, shakily, and stalks off. Joshua resumes his reading, and tries to put it out of his mind.

The next morning, Edward doesn’t bring up his love confession. Joshua assumes, falsely and unwisely, that this means he’s forgotten.

-

The next time he hears it, they’ve just narrowly escaped an ambush. The Legion (Edward named it, of course. Joshua tells him his obsession with Roman culture is both pretentious and borderline fetishistic, but Edward doesn't listen.) is still in its formative days, a young army filled with young, inexperienced soldiers. It's been five years since their first encounter with the Blackfoot.

They walk right into it, Joshua, Edward, and the four legionaries they have with them. A small force, designed for diplomacy. Edward still talks to most tribes himself, before he marches in with his armies, and he walks right into a fucking ambush, two of the soldiers shot precisely in the forehead before anyone even realizes what's happening. The other two soldiers draw their machetes, but they can't see anything, and one of them cries out and goes down when he’s caught in the thigh by a throwing spear.

Joshua and Edward take one look at each other, and come to the same conclusion:  _ run. _ They turn, and run, as fast as they can. The last remaining soldier runs after them, but they hear a gurgle and Joshua turns for a moment to see another spear piercing him through the throat. They're in the mountains, and the enemies are invisible among rocky outcroppings, caves, and craggy stone. He keeps running, following Edward and hoping the man knows where he’s going.

Which, if he took a moment to think about it, had been the story of his life for the last five years.

They duck into a cave, small and dark, but safe. Bullets have stopped whizzing by their heads, and spears have stopped clattering off the rocks inches from their heads, and the pursuing party must have either lost them, or decided that chasing them further isn't worth it, and either way, Joshua is relieved. Angry, angry, angry that they had to retreat, but relieved nonetheless. He leans back against the cave wall, and lets out a bark of laughter as he regains his breath, and Edward joins in, laughing and laughing, adrenaline coursing through both of them.

And then, without warning, Edward’s lips are on his, stealing away the breath he’s only just recovered. Hard and insistent, clicking their teeth together, hands on his waist, sliding up his sides. Joshua recoils immediately, pushing Edward back.

“Wh-”

“I love you,” Edward says. “I love you. I love you _.”  _ The look in his eyes is frenetic, so intense Joshua almost can't look, and horribly genuine. “I love you.” It's like a mantra, and Joshua can't say anything in the face of such blistering honesty.  _ “I love you.”  _ Edward kisses him again. Then, he drops to his knees.

“What are you doing?” Joshua asks, even as Edward presses his face against his crotch, mouthing him through layers of well-worn fabric. Even as Edward unbuttons his pants, slides them down his hips, and takes his growing erection in hand. “Edward. Edward, don’t.”

_ You don’t love me. You only think you do because I’ve been here so long. You only think you need to do this because you nearly died. It’s a sin. I shouldn’t. I can’t. I won’t. _

The other man doesn’t even object to Joshua not using his new name, staring up at Joshua with big eyes that belie the brutality and craftiness underneath. Eyes that say that it’s five years ago, they’re young and just meeting and Edward is still the idealist that he was. Eyes that can almost convince Joshua that he himself is still a good man, untainted by war, and bloodshed, and conquering, and that he’ll be untainted by whatever happens next.

Almost is enough. Joshua chokes down soft moans, and lets Edward first stroke him, then kiss him, then take him entirely into a warm, eager mouth, and he can’t control the miniscule thrusts and twitches of his hips, or the way his hands, aching for something to do, twine their way into Edward’s dark hair and pull him down further. Edward, for his part, works diligently, throat convulsing around Joshua’s cock as he sucks. He presses Joshua back against the wall of the cave and swallows him to the root, and it’s good, it’s so  _ good _ .

He comes quietly, with a little gasp, and Edward’s name on his lips.

-

Most of the men don’t know, although they must suspect. They don’t know about the kisses, the bloody ones stolen after battle, or the soft, gentle ones shared in times of peace. They don’t know about the tableaux their leaders make, stretched out on top of one another, naked and writhing. They don’t know about the “I love you”’s.

Joshua hears it over the years, again and again, as the butchering, raping, and pillaging hardens his heart. 

He says it back only once. Edward is on his back, legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him close. His face and chest are damp with sweat, but the expression on his face is one of bliss. It’s serene. It’s beautiful. Joshua shifts his hips just slightly, watching Edward pant and arch his back, mesmerized.

He is not blind to what Edward is. He’s monstrous, merciless, and the Joshua of 20 years ago would have desired nothing more than to kill the man beneath him. He would try to shoot the man, instead of making him moan and grasp at the bedsheets like a lifeline. It would be so easy to kill him now, too, just take the gun still in its holster on the bedside table. The movement of a single finger, and the world would be short one more monster.

Instead, he leans down, and kisses Edward’s slightly open mouth. He whispers against the lips that have killed the old Joshua.

“I love you.”

When he pulls back, he sees the light in Edward’s eyes. It’s never been brighter, and Joshua is afraid it never will be that bright again.

-

The last time he hears it, it sounds different. It’s years later, and their little expedition has turned into an army. More than an army- a huge, highly organized, militaristic state. A cult of personality dedicated to Caesar.

Joshua thinks the power’s gone to the man’s head. More than thinks- he knows. Caesar’s spent so many years cultivating the illusion of divinity among his followers that he’s convinced himself of it. But a true god wouldn’t need to lie next to him every night, shaking in pain.

More than anything, Joshua is tired. Close to 35 years of being a merciless son-of-a-bitch will do that to a man, regardless of who he was before, and regardless of how strong he becomes. And Joshua is almost certain that who he was before died somewhere between Salt Lake City and the Colorado River. He knows that Edward Sallow died somewhere along that road also. A stray bullet hit him, or a spear, the man fell in the heat of battle, and now Joshua talks to his ghost every day.

The ghost smiles, and kisses him full on the lips. The ghost wants him to capture a wall for the Legion, and Joshua will do it, because he still smiles like Edward when they’re alone together, big eyes that tell Joshua that the last 35 years of sin will all be absolved if he just keeps marching. 

  
“I love you. You can do this,” he says, and Joshua is too mesmerized by the promise of salvation to hear that the  _ can _ sounds more like a  _ will _ . Caesar slips Joshua’s gun into the holster at his hip, and kisses him again. “I love you,” he says, but the light in those wide eyes is long, long gone.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr @legatelanivs


End file.
